You work hard to make the player’s job easier. Even though every dedicated player will want to customize his or her UI, it’s up to you to present an attractive and intuitive interface that gets people playing the game long enough to become dedicated players. Part artist, part designer, and part programmer, the game will be presented to the world through your eyes.

A Typical Day

You just finished up with a new targeting reticle for your favorite player race that makes the HUD for those players feel very distinct and pull them deeper into the game world, and you’re looking forward to the team’s reaction when it arrives in the new game build this afternoon. Your next task will be to design and mock up a UI for the new resource system the designers have created. You’ve already crafted some icons and designed a way to display the information in a clean and non-distracting manner, but need to check in with the team and be sure the theme conveys all the necessary information. Your design incorporates explicit color choices, unique animated elements, and distinct icons that make it eye-catching and attractive … but also informative and functional.

Who You Work With the Most

Because you have art, scripting, and design skills, your work overlaps with nearly every department. You’ll keep abreast of all the different design features going into the game, learning about weapons, abilities, and character functionality as they are developed. Quite often, you’ll contribute ideas based on your understanding of the interface that may not have occurred to anyone else. Once the design goal is finalized you’ll craft the UI art, working with the Art Director to fit the elements into the game’s overall look and feel. Finally, you implement the functioning interface through XML and LUA scripting and other tools provided by the programming team.

What You’ve Done Before

• Graphic Design experience in web or print
• Strong sense of layout, typography and information design
• Good illustrative abilities at the pixel and icon level
• Experience with Macromedia Flash for UI prototyping
• Comfortable with scripting languages
• Experience with LUA and XML a plus
• Experience with usability testing
• Passion for games and MMOs

You love gaming communities, and you understand how they work, what they care about and how they respond to situations. You can write a terrific press release and you create infectious excitement amongst gamers everywhere, whether through forum posts, personal emails, or in-person events.  You are both thick-skinned and flame-retardant.  You love games… live games, and are games.  Being the frontline interface with the gaming community for a brand new game is extremely exciting to you.  

A Typical Day

Today begins by spending a few minutes checking the forums and seeing what the community is talking about.  You hear about a bug, delete or close a few posts, and notice a 5 page post with feedback on some new content.  You send the bug off to development, and start to organize the feedback.  Half-way through, you get a call and are asked to edit some patch notes and put together a press release & post for them.  Afterwards, you go to a website meeting to schedule and plan content updates over the next month.  In the afternoon, you have an exciting meeting with the design team where you get a few community questions answered, pass on a few suggestions, one of which the designers want to implement immediately.  You then sit down and write a quick blog entry to share some of the answers you found.  You cap off your day by having an online interview with a fansite.

Who You Work With the Most

You work every day with the fans of our game.  You also work closely with development so that you understand things going on in the game as well as they do.  Your day to day work is highly interwoven with that of the web team, and you also coordinate efforts with PR.

What You’ve Done Before

• 2+ Years of being either a fansite webmaster of a large, successful site, or a community manager of an MMO
• Excellent writing skills
• Great personality, especially in online form
• Working knowledge of how websites work
• Extreme passion for games and MMOs
• Fluent in both French and German and knowledgeable about the gaming communities in both cultures.

Laguna Hills, CA – December 15, 2011 – Red 5 Studios™ announces the launch of its first professional cosplay program, aimed to encourage and inspire the cosplay community by sponsoring passionate and creative individuals. Well-known cosplayer, Crystal Graziano, has been selected for Red 5’s first yearlong sponsorship. She was chosen from a pool of top cosplayers for her previous quality work and passion for videogame roles.

As part of the sponsorship, Red 5 will pay for all of Crystal Graziano’s cosplay activities and unique costume creations for one year – along with supplying professional photography and photoshop sessions. In addition, Crystal Graziano will get to fill the role of Firefall’s heroic female protagonist, “Mourningstar”, at key conventions and promotions throughout 2012.

“Because Firefall’s sci-fi world and story are so rich and colorful, we see there being a lot of interest from artists and designers,” said Red 5 CEO and Chief Creative Officer, Mark Kern. “Developers should embrace these individuals because they add so much to the universe, both in-game and out. This program is our way of showing appreciation and support for what they contribute to the game and community.”

Red 5 has once again called upon the masterful craftsmanship of award-winning Hollywood FX artist, Steve Wang, to create the Mourningstar costume. Complete with lights and effects, this epic cosplay will bring an unprecedented level of realism and detail to Firefall’s Mourningstar character. Red 5 has released a video showing the initial fitting for Steve Wang’s costume at the follow link: http://bit.ly/firefallcosplay.

Red 5 Studios’ upcoming free-to-play open world shooter, Firefall, is currently running the first stage of its exclusive beta – planned to roll-out through 2012. Players can sign-up for the chance to be invited into the beta and meet Firefall’s enthusiastic community at the official homepage: http://www.firefallthegame.com.

About Red 5 Studios
Red 5 Studios is an online game developer located in California, founded by Mark Kern, former team lead for World of Warcraft. Red 5 Studios is dedicated to bringing together millions of gamers across the world by creating immersive worlds, intriguing stories and compelling characters. They believe that online games and persistent worlds are the future of video games. Visit www.red5studios.com for more information.

Firefall, Red 5 Studios and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red 5 Studios, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

What’s It All About

You are a hardcore gamer who has attended many gaming and geek culture events on your own time and as a professional working behind-the-scenes. You know what gamers want and recognize what they need. Being a driving force behind event experiences that are fun and engaging for gamers is a source of excitement and motivation. Your attention to detail, stellar organization, and expert communication skills help you to juggle numerous tasks easily. High-pressure situations don’t faze you. In fact, you tend to shine when the pressure is on, and your calm and collected manner helps everyone around you work better under pressure, too.

A Typical Day

In the morning, you spend a few minutes with members of the marketing, eSports and community management groups to firm up the priorities for the day. You follow-up with people who need things from you, and follow-up with people you are waiting to hear back from. Email, phone calls, and in-person chats all help you to move things forward. Before lunch, you have checked in with the agency representatives that are working on getting you information that is crucial to your next steps. You are good at applying the right amount of pressure to get things done in a timely fashion, especially because your own organization system helps you to stay on top of tasks and timelines. In the afternoon, you head over to see the latest version of a trailer being created by the video team for an event coming up in a couple of months. After that, you stop by to check in with the operations team to ask a few questions about the new server they’re building for events. While replying to new requests from the agency, you get an email from a contact giving you the heads-up about a new promotions opportunity. Before leaving for the day, you follow up on this lead, and email the marketing team with a quick summary of the day’s updates.

Who You Work With the Most

As Red 5’s event coordinator, you work as an integral part of Red 5’s marketing team to help plan, organize and carry-out events. You are especially crucial to the organization of Red 5’s eSports strategy. This involves working closely with members of the eSports, marketing, PR, and community management teams. Facilitating clear and steady communication between all of these groups is one of your most important functions. You also work regularly with external agencies to help organize event logistics and partnerships.

What You’ve Done Before

• 3+ years of administrative assistant experience or project management
• 1+ years of gaming event work experience
• Professional organizer interested in moving full-time into the game industry
• 2+ years as an active member of a gaming guild and/or clan
• Passion for games, especially eSports titles

You look at massively multiplayer online games as a collection of systems and code. You love watching players encounter the new features and systems you’ve written, allowing them to interact with the world and perhaps even create new things within it.  Item creation, guild systems, spells and abilities – anything the players can interact with is in your purview. During the design process you’re all about prototyping game systems, and both before and after release you want to make sure the logic on the server that governs these systems is sound.  Building upon the fundamental server architecture, you and the other gameplay programmers code the systems players will utilize over and over again.

A Typical Day

You spend your morning working with the design team going over a prototype for a player character inventory management system. It’s important you determine what underlying technology is necessary if you’re going to make the system work. After coming up with a basic plan you meet with the server and AI engineers to make certain the technology groundwork exists to implement the feature. You outline a basic specification and the wiki and pass it around for input. While you are waiting on feedback, you hit the bug database and knock off the last remaining issues with the last system you implemented.

Who You Work With the Most

You collaborate with the other programmers before implementing any new features or procedural changes, trying to get the best idea on how to tackle any issue. You also spend a lot of time working with the design team. You’re part game designer yourself, but with your programming knowledge you’re able to ask questions and steer the game designers toward feature solutions that take advantage of your existing code and technology. When they propose a feature, you can come back with mechanical solution suggestions that make sense, both to the programmers and the designers.

What You’ve Done Before

• 3-5+ years C/C++ programming experience
• 5+ years game development experience
• Experience working closely with designers
• Excellent and self-driven optimizer
• Passion for games

What’s it All About

You’re a hardcore gamer. When you play games you push them to their limits trying to break and exploit them. You can easily communicate and explain complex issues clearly and simply, your succinctness is legendary. You look at a series of problems and investigate until you see one core issue. You’re detail oriented, nothing gets by you.

A Typical Day

When you sit down the first thing you do is check what your bug queue looks like while you grab the most recent build. You load up the game and begin to check the build for any major bugs. When you find game breaking issues you alert the team and follow-up until the bug is resolved. After you finish your sweep of the game you report what you tested and send it to the tribe. Time to start completing some test cases! This is your bread and butter. You go through the game verifying everything is working as intended, writing bugs along the way when they aren’t. You’ll often have tribe members that need help testing; you love this because it allows you to learn so much about the various disciplines.

Who You Work With the Most

You work a lot with the rest of the QA team but a great part of being a member of QA at Red5 is you work with everyone, in all disciplines. You constantly help people test their work and provide feedback when they need it. When someone wants to know what the status of build looks like they go to you.

What You’ve Done Before

• Passion for gaming
• Experience testing previous titles is preferred
• College Degree
• Familiar with PCs and Windows OS
• Great people skills
• Basic understanding of the software development life cycle

Where you’re concerned, no database is ever fast enough or reliable enough. You enjoy designing and tuning databases to meet the unique requirements of a massive team-based action shooter, a MMO like nothing else on the market, and all its various components. Working with the latest in open source database technology, you craft custom solutions that are flexible, adaptable and fast. In the end, it’s all about collecting and organizing raw, untamed data and coaxing out the most valuable information; coming up with the tools that let even the least database-savvy members of your team view the data they need to see and organize it in the manner necessary to accomplish their missions. If you can do all that and keep the data secure and flowing unhindered, you’re happy.

A typical day

You’ve just tracked down the query from the latest game feature that, under certain high load conditions, was tanking the database. After a few hours, you think you’ve optimized it so that it not only addresses the problem but improves performance significantly. Now it’s time to sit down with the senior server programmer and develop a test case to make sure your fix works. Afterwards, you start to work on the bots that will stress test the databases by simulating player load.

Who you work with the most

The Senior Server Programmer and the Director of Technical Operations work together with you to architect fast custom database solutions using open-source database tech. Everything has to be custom tailored to the unique needs of your MMO’s database traffic, but that’s what keeps things interesting.

What You’ve Done Before

• 5+ years hands-on experience as a MySQL DBA on Unix-based (Linux) system in a mission critical environment (DataCenter including 24×7 operations)
• Intimate knowledge of MySQL architecture, best-practices and tuning philosophies
• Strong knowledge and hands on experience related to mission critical backup and recovery
• Advance Linux or Linux-like systems administration, performance and filesystem tuning
• Production experience implementing and managing replication
• Able to write scripts in an administrative language (Python, Ruby, or Shell)
• Proven ability to work well in a crisis and under pressure
• Excellent oral and written communications skills
• Passion for gaming

Singapore – November 28, 2011. Red 5 Singapore Pte. Ltd. (“Red 5 Singapore”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of The9 Limited (NASDAQ: NCTY) (“The9”), today announced that its highly anticipated team-based shooter game, Firefall, is licensed to Garena Online Private Limited (“Garena”) for distribution across Southeast Asia and Taiwan. The agreement is for a term of six years, during which Garena will pay Red 5 Singapore US$23 million, plus royalties, for the exclusive right to distribute Firefall to game players in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Philippines, and is an important step in the global rollout of Firefall. This collaboration between The9, Red 5 Singapore and Garena is expected to deliver enhanced outreach of Firefall in these markets, as well as an unrivaled gaming experience.

Mr. Zhu Jun, CEO of Red 5 Singapore, and CEO and Chairman of The9 said, “This agreement is not merely a good start, we view it as an exciting leap forward. Together with Garena, we will deliver Firefall into the hands of eager Asian gamers. When we entered Singapore, we made a commitment to deliver an incredible gaming experience to customers across Asia, and this partnership brings us closer to fulfilling that promise. This license marks a great milestone for The9, Red 5 Singapore and Garena. Now we will turn our attention to China, Korea and Japan.”

Mr. Mark Kern, CEO of Red 5 Studios, Inc., the developer of Firefall, said, “It’s great to see everything progressing across all territories. Red 5 Studios just finished off the year with a fantastic show at G*Star in Korea and we’ve once again been thrilled by everyone’s response to Firefall. There are a lot of fans anticipating Firefall’s launch and the license to Garena makes it possible for us to deliver.”

Mr. Forrest Li, CEO of Garena said, “Our mission is to bring world- wide reputable AAA quality games to millions of gamers of Garena community — the largest gamer community in the region. We believe Firefall is such a game that will redefine the online game experience. We are very excited for this partnership and we will be working closely with The9 and Red5 to provide Garena users with the best possible gaming environment for Firefall.”

The deal establishes an impressive precedent for licensing AAA games in Southeast Asia at US$23 million including licensing fees and minimum guarantees.

About The9 Limited
The9 Limited is an online game operator and developer in China. The9 directly, or through affiliates, operates licensed massively multiplayer online role playing games, or MMORPGs, including Soul of The Ultimate Nation™, Atlantica and Kingdom Heroes 2 Online, as well as its proprietary MMORPGs and web and social games including World of Fighter, Winning Goal and Q Jiang San Guo, in mainland China. It has also obtained exclusive licenses to operate other games in mainland China, including Seoyugi, Rosh, Free Realms and Planetside 2. In addition, The9 is developing various proprietary games, including Shen Xian Zhuan, FireFall, Era Zero and other MMORPGs and web and social games. In 2010, The9 established its Mobile Internet Unit to focus on mobile internet business.

About Red 5 Studios, Inc.
Red 5 Studios is an online game developer located in California, founded by Mark Kern, former team lead for World of Warcraft. Red 5 Studios is dedicated to bringing together millions of gamers across the world by creating immersive worlds, intriguing stories and compelling characters. It believes that online games and persistent worlds are the future of video games. For more information, please visit www.red5studios.com.

About Garena Online Private Limited
Garena is a leading online game service provider. Its flagship online game platform, Garena+, is the largest social platform in South East Asia and Taiwan, designed for online gamers to meet, chat and play games with each other. Garena has introduced the latest premium online games on Garena+, including the award-winning League of Legends and other premium game titles, such as first-person shooter game Black Shot and real-time strategy game Heroes of Newerth. For more information, please visit www.garena.com.

Safe Harbor Statement
This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the “safe harbor” provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as “will,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “future,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “estimates” and similar statements. The9 may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Forms 20-F and 6-K, etc., in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about The9’s beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, political and economic policies of the Chinese government, the laws and regulations governing the online game industry, information disseminated over the Internet and Internet content providers in China, intensified government regulation of Internet cafes, The9’s ability to retain existing players and attract new players, license, develop or acquire additional online games that are appealing to users, anticipate and adapt to changing consumer preferences and respond to competitive market conditions, and other risks and uncertainties outlined in The9’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual reports on Form 20-F. The9 does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

For further information, please contact:

Ms. Phyllis Sai
IR Manager, Investor Relations
The9 Limited
Tel: +86 (21) 5172-9990
Email: IR@corp.the9.com
Website: http://www.corp.the9.com/

Emmy Teo
PR and Marketing Manager
Red 5 Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Tel: +65 6681 0353
Email: emmy.teo@red5studios.com.sg

What It’s All About

You’re a nerd. Not just any nerd, a nerd who likes to get in front of other people and scream how awesome it is to be a nerd. You love talking about games and you love talking to gamers. So much so that you try to involve yourself in every gaming community you hear about. You love writing blog posts, taking pictures, making videos, posting on forums, and commenting on social media. And you’d love to do all of this for the Firefall community. Remote workers free to apply.

A Typical Day

The first thing you do in the morning is check up on the Firefall forums to see what the latest buzz is. You answer some questions and moderate a few threads before diving into a new blog post about the latest feature put in the game. Afterwards, you spend some time pulling metrics on last week’s marketing efforts for the weekly update meeting. When all that’s done, you chat it up with marketing and the rest of the community team to decide what the next week’s content is going to be. Then you head back into the forums and scour the web for any additional comments you need to respond to. You cap off the day by following up with the fan sites to see if there’s anything they need in the next few days.

Who You Work With the Most

You will spend a lot of your time interacting with the Firefall community and working directly with the community manager. You will end up working with everyone in the company at various stages in order to create new and exciting content for the community. Projects involving new web features will bring you and the web team in close contact as you help direct community site projects and provide feedback throughout all stages of development.

What You’ve Done Before

• More than two years experience in a customer support or community role, with demonstratable focus on creating content
• Solid understanding of web and video media, social networking, and the latest community tools and techniques
• Experience working with at least one CMS (Content Management System) and commercial forum software such as vBulletin
• Strong excitement for online communities, gaming, social media, and web content
• Passionate about Firefall, the Firefall community, and online shooters

What’s It All About

You are the architect for the playable space in the world, building mechanically interesting areas in which players enjoy exploring as much as they do trying to kill one another. It’s your responsibility to make sure the environments aren’t only laid out well, but functional while providing many interesting tactical choices for players to discover. By working closely with other designers and programmers, you devise ways to structure your levels so players can use all their characters’ abilities and all their own game play skills to overcome challenges and opponents.

A Typical Day

After reviewing the latest character abilities and open world art assets, you initiate a discussion with other designers about creative ways in which you can structure your playable area to take advantage of these character mechanics and highlight important mission storylines. You begin laying out the general theme for the area, noting combat “choke points” and non-combat challenges that can occur in the environment – collaborating with artists in the creation of new doodads and other game elements that are required to complete the experience. In addition to helping craft the open world you’re also putting the final touches on a multi-player competitive map that incorporates additional aspects of game play. You organize play sessions where you, along with a other team members, log in and experience the map. You’ll demonstrate how your level design highlights the art and game elements, check the level for bugs and missing features and finally develop alternative tactics for exterminating one another in virtual reality. In addition to crafting your own playable experiences you will also spend time working with fellow designers to help them elevate their work into something everyone can be proud of.

Who You Work With the Most

You work hand-in-hand with other game designers, artists and coders, making sure your experiences fit consistently and seamlessly into the world at large. By coordinating your efforts with the design team, you’re able to build environments that showcase different game elements at all the appropriate times – introducing new challenges to correspond with new abilities and new items. Since the artists and the modelers create visual assets you’ll use to design the levels, making sure they know the needs of the game is vitally important to the task at hand. What excites them, excites you and will result in excited, enthusiastic players that love the game.

What You’ve Done Before

• Experience with UnrealEd, Radiant, or equivalent level-building tool
• Playable level portfolio with at least one shipped triple AAA title
• Skilled with 3DS Max
• Experience with scripting missions, NPCs and events
• Strong sense of architecture
• Familiarity with texturing and lighting for next-gen engines
• Passion for games and multiplayer experiences